It often is desired to feed a load (such as material to be destroyed, food to be shredded, etc.) towards a processing mechanism (such as a shredding mechanism, cutting mechanism, etc.). Conventionally, feeding mechanisms have been established for continuously moving materials within a certain range of dimensions towards the processing mechanism. For example, a load within a first range of thickness could be handled continuously, but the feeding mechanism would need to be stopped and manually adjusted before trying to feed a load of a second range of thickness.
It has long been commonly appreciated that care is usually required in feeding an input load into most machines as to proper orientation of pieces of the load, uniform quality of pieces of the load, etc. This has long been applicable for machines involving cutting and especially the specific case of paper shredders. It conventionally had been recognized that the operative cutting mechanisms in paper shredders were designed to accommodate a particular thickness of paper and that inputting too thick a stack of pages, for example, could damage or at least “stall” or jam the shredder. For accomplishing high-security destruction, in the past, each kind of material needing to be destroyed had a particular destruction mechanism designed to destroy the material based on its dimensions, kind of material, etc. Other than the present inventor's recent work being brought to the market, there has not yet been a destruction mechanism that would destroy paper to high-security small pieces as well as also destroy non-paper materials such as a polyester-type material (such as key tape), a thick material (such as a book), etc. Rather, conventionally no more was expected of a paper shredder than that it shred paper. Merely meeting the recent security requirements demanding yet smaller-sized residue has occupied the shredder industry, as most of the shredder industry seemingly has been unable to design products to satisfy the new high-security shredder requirements. Only a few companies have actually managed to do so with actual viable products in the marketplace.
In the case of an expensive category of machine called a disintegrator, paper shredding and different types of to-be-destroyed material ultimately may be accommodated. However, within the disintegrator machine the different materials may travel non-identical feed paths. See US 2003/0201353 A1 by Lefrancois et al., titled “Dual-path office product disintegrator” published Oct. 30, 2003. Different input ports are provided for different types of input materials. Disintegrators are heavy, large-dimensioned (non-portable) machinery. Several commercially-available disintegrators actually are two machines combined, in order to perform the destruction function. Typically, a conventional shredder is typically atop a conventional disintegrator. It pre-shreds paper (and some other materials), and then feeds the-pre-shredded material to the disintegrator. This is usually necessary to obtain adequate throughput rates.
In high-security destruction, before the present inventor's own work it had not been possible to destroy different to-be-destroyed materials in a single shredder or a single disintegrator. Thus, the question of feeding a significantly non-uniform load of to-be-destroyed material had not been encountered in the area of high-security destruction.
Examples of conventional feeding mechanisms are mentioned.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,958,737 issued May 25, 1976 to Scott (Precision Sales Corp.) for “Adjustable Feed Mechanism.”
U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,330 issued Apr. 22, 1997 to Sharp et al. (ASC Machine Tools, Inc.) for “Self-adjusting Feed Stock Accumulator System.”
U.S. Pat. No. 5,348,282 issued Sep. 20, 1994 to Choi et al. (Xerox Corp.) for “Self Adjusting Feed Roll.”
U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,798 issued Nov. 11, 1986 to Akers (Bell & Howell Co.) for “Envelope Feeding Mechanism for Mail Sorting Machines.”